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Embracing the Change

When I first made the decision to take a leave of absence from IBM and go out on my own (before I was laid off), one of my primary motivations was that to stay at IBM I would have to completely change my career path. That path would have moved me away from working primarily on client software (which I’d done since I started at IBM) to working primarily on server software. At the time, this type of work didn’t really appeal to me.

But the truth is there was one motivator behind my final decision:

I didn’t want change.

In hindsight, this was not a good reason to leave IBM. That’s not to say I shouldn’t have left, it’s just to say that it’s better to have someplace you’re moving to, not something you’re moving away from. I chose to move away from change.

When IBM came to me with a job working on client software, I jumped at the chance; but change got me anyway in the form of a layoff two months later.

Right now I’m faced with some of the same decisions I had to make three years ago. This time I’m handling things differently:

I’m embracing the change.

Change is inevitable and you either need to go along for the ride or you’ll be left behind. Technology changes. Work changes. Life changes.

I even found out recently that resisting to change and at the same time somewhat subconsciously knowing that where you going isn’t where you want to end up can produce a lot of frustration that you then project in all kinds of directions, even the ones that you should join as they are going in the direction you feel you should move to but deny yourself.
Realizing that can be a first step to being more satisfied – the next one being to do something about it, of course! 🙂